


Among Women

by TabithaJean



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Abduction Arc (X-Files), Cancer Arc, Hurt/Comfort, Maternity Leave, Mild Angst, Motherhood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Episode: s04e24 Gethsemane, Season/Series 09, post-episode: s02e21 The Calusari, single parent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2020-09-28 11:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20425169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabithaJean/pseuds/TabithaJean
Summary: How does Scully deal with the trauma she meets through her work? A look at some of the women in Scully's life support her when she is vulnerable, in the smaller every day moments...





	1. Mother of Grace

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really interested in how Scully processes everything that happens to her, and intrigued by what support the other women in her life offer her. It would be so different to the support she gets from Mulder. Kind of a continuous work in progress if and when different ideas come....
> 
> Also, none of these characters belong to me. Disclaimer etc.

Scully runs her fingers up the stem of her wine glass where it swells into the goblet before taking a big sip. Her shoulders loosen. She no longer feels the dull ache from where her blood was taken, no longer sees the white cotton wool that is taped to her inner elbow.

_No change_, her doctor had told her. _The treatment is keeping it contained. But it has not shrunk._

She had heard a ringing in her ears. Putting her fingers to her temples, she panicked that it’s another symptom. _Stop this_, she had admonished herself, _it’s just_ _stress related tinnitus._ Her reaction surprised her; she had expected this news.

Outside she squints at the sun. She opts to walk home, appreciating the banality of the everyday. The bus she would normally take, a restless toddler trying to escape his pushchair, the traffic sounds washing over her like waves. Neither work nor her empty apartment offer anything appealing, and so she walks to the bar four blocks from her building. Marble Bar, with its olive trees by the door and its promise of distraction and its potential for oblivion.

*

Wine is her drink of choice. She enjoys a glass of dry Chablis or a bold Rioja, anything full-bodied. She orders a 1991 Californian Chardonnay and sips it greedily, enjoying her flamboyance. She orders it again. And again, and again. Four times in total. She starts to consider her funeral half way through her second glass.

Amazing Grace, she thinks. That verse about shining bright as the sun. The Goldberg Variations as people arrive, and John Donne. '_Death, thou shalt die_'. She pictures her casket, light brown and varnished, carried by Mulder, Bill, and four anonymous faces. Would Charlie even know? She sees Mulder choosing not to navigate the family dynamics, deferring all decision making, and sitting in the 10th row rather than up front. Slipping out before the wake. A half-assed bunch of flowers at the service while he self-flagellates at home. As she finishes glass number two, she makes a note to talk to Mulder. He is to represent them, _her_, and she needs him to take his place so that her whole self is in that front pew. She tells herself to find a better way to articulate this. Her mind swims with glass number three, and she repeats details to try and cement them._ Irises, irises, irises_.

She looks at the window, and her world is in slow-motion. Her vision takes a few seconds to catch up with the movement of her head. She can’t remember the last time she drank this much. It feels good. She is cotton wool light and lead-limb heavy all at once, and nothing can touch her here.

Suddenly she needs to talk to someone. Things aren’t making as much sense anymore. What did she need to talk to Mulder about? She rolls her head back and feels weightless. She wants someone to witness her, to anchor her in this moment. She picks up her phone.

*

Margaret sees her daughter’s silhouette from outside the bar and adds it to a collection of memories she’s not even aware she’s compiling. Her meetings with Dana are now always accompanied by cancer: the ultimate uninvited guest. As Maggie approaches the table, she sees a candle wax version of her daughter, with relaxed eyelids and slack lips.

“Dana?” Maggie leans and kisses her pale cheek. Scully smiles lazily at her as she sits down.

“Mom,” Scully says warmly. She takes Maggie’s hand, and Maggie grips as if her own strength will send life from her hands to her daughter.

“Dana, sweetie, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

_No change…_

“Mm fine…” Scully stares at her glass stem with wet eyes. “I’m just… I guess I’m just finding it a little difficult to see the light today.”

Maggie wants to laugh at her daughter’s phrasing. She feels adrenaline, like she was caught talking in class. Of course her daughter still chooses her words so precisely, even in this state. Scully closes her eyes and pushes the bridge of her nose, focussing on the pressure until she can trust herself to breath without crying.

“Oh honey.” They are silent for a moment. “Where’s Fox?”

“I didn’t call him. He would want to… _fix_ this.” Scully waves her fingers in the air as she speaks, and she finishes her wine. She rests her chin in her hand. Now that her mom is here, she doesn’t have to think about the walk home or where her keys are, and she suddenly feels exhausted. She closes her eyes. Deep breath in.

“Have you eaten anything?” Scully shakes her head slightly, and Maggie orders sweet potato fries. Scully eats them one at a time, picking them up with her manicured nails. She wipes rather than licks the salt off her fingers. She meets her mother’s gaze and holds it, imagining silver spider web strands connecting her head to her mom’s. When the bowl of fries is half empty, she pushes it away.

“Ok, let’s go.” Maggie stands up and doesn’t offer to help when Scully stumbles slightly trying to put her coat on. It would be refused. She links her arm through Scully’s and leads her outside.

*

Cold air slaps Scully in the face. She doesn’t remember leaving the bar. She is a helium balloon, being pulled gently down the sidewalk.

“Do you believe in intercessory prayer?” Scully asks suddenly. Her tongue feels like it’s too big for her mouth. Her words are soft like their edges have been filed down. She concentrates hard to keep her train of thought.

“What?”

“At work, I’ve seen things that I cannot explain. That’s the best description I can come up with. And it’s so inadequate for what I’ve seen… human fluke worms. A boy who could conduct lightening. Stigmata. I can’t witness these phenomena without believing God.”

Maggie stays silent. Scully rarely offers anything of her professional life.

“I was thinking of the Church service. For after.” Scully doesn’t see Maggie turning her face and squeezing her eyes shut for just a second. “All the Bible verses I could think of had God acting as some kind of comforter. Or protector. ‘I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears’. Or ‘I will strengthen and help you’….

But what about now? What about all our prayers when Melissa was in hospital, or me? Why aren’t they answered? How can I see Mulder shape shift into another man in my own apartment – what is that if not a miracle – yet God doesn’t hear what’s in my own heart? And for every family who does get their miracle, there are those like us who don’t. So, what does that say about God the protector?”

Maggie squeezes her daughter’s arm and pauses.

“I believe,” she clears her throat, “I believe that can ask for care. We can pray for strength and comfort, and I believe we will receive it. But we can’t ask for … we can’t _expect_ God to change the course. We can hope, but we can’t expect. If we don’t receive what we’ve asked for, it doesn’t mean He doesn’t hear. Those verses you quoted… that’s what we can expect. We can face anything with Him by our side, but it doesn’t diminish our pain. Or fear. But we aren’t alone.”

“And you believe it helps?”

“I believe it does.” Maggie gave a short laugh. “Holy Mary knows first-hand what it’s like to lose a child. That helps me.”

*

Scully shrugs her coat off and it falls to the floor. She walks towards the couch, but the floor is tilted and she can’t get there. Maggie pulls her into her bedroom where she crawls onto the bed. Her feet smile as her shoes are removed. Her pencil skirt is unzipped and tugged off. She opens her eyes as Maggie lifts her head to offer water. She drinks noisily and quickly, spilling water out of the side of her mouth. The room spins when she lies down again.

“Are you going to be sick?” Maggie asks, lying on the other side of the bed.

“Mom, what on _earth_ do you know about that?” Scully slurs with bemusement.

“Do you really think I spent 40 years as a Naval wife without having to do this for your father?”

Scully hoots with laughter. She rolls close to her mom.

“No, I’m not going to be sick…” she lays her head on Maggie’s shoulder, “but would you pray with me, please?”

What prayer would be adequate for her girl in this moment? Maggie can’t imagine. She starts uncertainly. “Heavenly Father –“

“No, Mom, I’d like the Hail Mary.” 

“Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee," they pray together. The words land in Scully's bones. "Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” 

“Mmm, say it again,” Scully demands sleepily. She closes her eyes and drifts away on the current of the prayer.

Maggie buries her lips and nose in her daughter’s hair and inhales her as she did when Dana was a toddler drinking her milk. The intimacy of the evening catches in her chest. She can’t remember the last time she offered such basic care for Dana. When she is confident Dana is asleep, Maggie cries for a few minutes, searing this moment into her brain. The weight of her child, the warmth of her.

*

Scully would remember minor details of the evening. Her first velvet sip. An image of her funeral procession. Cold air. The smell of her mother’s sweater. A few months, more treatment and more bad news later, she arrives at her mother’s house to see Father McCue sat at the dinner table. She isn’t surprised, although she can’t quite remember why.


	2. Thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully tries to solve an challenge with William.

His eyes close, and his fists relax. She watches his thick bottom lip pucker and suck intermittently on nothing. Scully exhales slowly, relieved, and moves silently away from the sheepskin rug on the floor where her son has just soothed himself to sleep for the first time. A hard-earned win. She smiles, prematurely, for just at that moment she realises William’s diaper is dirty.

Her pulse quickens and butterflies gather in her chest, seemingly suffocating her. _Calm down_, she tells herself sternly. _Don't overreact. You can solve this. You can. _

Always one to appreciate a good structure, Scully had poured over the baby books, prepping for motherhood as she did her SATs, her grad medical admissions test, and every meeting at work since. Put them down clean, awake but sleepy: she knew this! She had played by the rules, William had not.

She pulls at her sweater collar, trying to keep up with her mind which roars through the silence of the apartment. _This is a small problem. This is minor. There is a solution here, one whereby he sleeps, you have peace and he isn’t lying in his own mess for 90 mins. What is it? What is it what is it what is it? Think, Dana! This is not a huge problem! _

The real problem, the deepest of deep and the most hidden of problems, is that she is alone. This absolutely secret problem is not acknowledged often, but now she takes it out into the daylight to inspect it, like a piece of coal mined from such depths that its black edges glisten in the sun.

She has no one in these moments. Not really. Her circle is small, and her trust even smaller. She views the world through a silk sheen, where whites are too bright and shadows are too inviting. Her mind is far more scrambled than any jet lag, night shift or stake out she’d ever experienced. There is distance between her and reality, and she has no one to pull her across the chasm.

She hasn't had any real sleep since _before_ William arrived. Since before she and Monica drove across the country and she delivered her child in an unsterile and unwelcoming and uncomfortable and unbelievable abandoned old town to an unspeaking, unfeeling, unhuman audience.

He hovers in her mind, currently sharing real estate with the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas: a memory of something that used to exist. She’s sure he would know what to do, taking it all in his stride, and she would watch from the sidelines feeling proud and marginalised at the same time. _Fuck you, Mulder_, she thinks. _Fuck you and your perfect, untested parenting skills._

She rubs her eyes and returns her most secret of problems back to the dark after that last thought. That’s enough time together today. Too dangerous.

Her mother would have opinions on William sleeping on a rug on the floor, let alone the current dilemma. Her Lamaze circle are trying to muddle through their own baby problems: they don’t need her, single mom Dana, calling them with a question she should really be asking her significant other if he wasn’t absent. She does not think of Missy. That leaves one other person. Scully has to get the number from her diary, so rare it is that she makes this call.

“Hello?”

“Hi – Tara? It’s Dana.” Scully takes a deep breath to even her voice.

“Dana, hi..” Scully hears the caution and slight curiosity in Tara’s voice. She digs her fingernails into her hands, cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder.

“Hi. Listen, I’m so sorry I’ve not called for a while. I was hoping you could help me with something? About William.”

“Of course! I would be happy to.” Tara’s voice is smooth, happy and animated, confident in this area. Everything Scully is not.

“He has just put himself to sleep for the first time –“

“Ah well done!”

“- Thanks, and I don’t want to disturb him. However, I think he’s soiled himself and I don’t know whether to change and wake him, or leave him to sleep.” Scully pauses for the briefest of seconds, “it’s nothing really, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“It’s no bother at all. I remember those days so well – when you try to do everything right but nothing seems to work. You are right in the middle of the hardest stage.”

Scully blinks, and tears pool in her eyes. She smiles widely, swallowing fiercely at the lump which prevents her from speaking.

“With Matthew, I would have probably woken him, changed him, made him cry, and then made myself cry. With his brother, I have just left him before. It’s not long, and babies really do need their sleep to grow. And parents need a break too.”

“Thanks Tara.” Dana sniffs, and wipes her nose with the cuff of her sweater. “Are you sure, though? It seems kind of….dirty.”

“I mean, yeah, it’s not the cleanest thing in the world. But is it any different to when you’re out and can’t find a change table? And I bet you could do with a few minutes to lie down too, right?”

“Yeah, I could.” Scully admits. Nights were the worst. She would wake, in between feeds, soaked in sweat, the faces of her birth audience following her from her dreams to her conscious. Even then, she couldn’t escape them. She stayed busy, knowing that any time her mind was free to wander, she would be back there: smelling the sweat and grime on her face, feeling the slight burn of the too-close candles against her arm, and the searing pain as she laboured. There was no telling when it would revisit, and she spent her wakeful hours playing a twisted version of hide and seek to keep it at bay.

“Well then, why don’t you give yourself 30 mins? And if you still feel weird about it, wake him then. Compromise.”

“Thank you so much,” Scully is aware of the desperation in her voice. “I really appreciate this, Tara. Really.”

“Any time, Dana. I mean it. Hey, Mom sent me a picture of William – he looks just like Matthew at that age.”

“He does?” Scully smiles. “I didn’t know that.”

“You know, we’re visiting the East Coast for Thanksgiving. We’re going to see my folks, and Mom of course. We should get lunch together. Adults only.”

Scully had never before given Tara a chance. She’d written her off as a vacuous housewife with whom she shared no common interests. She had never chosen to see her as a multi-dimensional person before, and this sudden knowledge shames Scully. She gulps again before answering.

“That would be really good. I think I need to get out more.”

“Sure you do. By then William will be more robust, and you won’t worry so much. It does get easier.” Tara pauses. “You know, I’ve never wanted to pry. It’s really none of my business. But I’m here, happy to talk at any time of the day.”

Scully nods, gazing at her small boy. The only thing that cuts through her silk-sheen world and her technicolour nightmares. “Tara, without sounding too dramatic… I think this call has made my day.”

Tara laughs. “I hope not! You really do need a break!”

The call leaves Scully with a pool of warmth in her stomach. The afternoon sun casts an orange light over her living room. Her child is sleeping, albeit in his own mess, but that too shall pass. Scully lies on the sofa, pulls the throw rug over her, and closes her eyes.

_Just thirty minutes,_ she says to herself. _That’s the solution. _


	3. Friday Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully and Ellen watch Steel Magnolias on a Friday night. Set after The Calusari, but also deals with the abduction arc. Some knowledge of Steel Magnolias might help!

The sound of AM radio has always comforted Scully. It reminds her of family car trips, four kids lulled to sleep in the back of a station wagon by the sensible, slow commentators and the sound of rain bouncing off the roof. Now, AM radio is her new roommate, always on when she is home.

She carries two plates to her coffee table to its monotonous soundtrack. She returns for cutlery, and once more for wine glasses. She could have done it in one trip, but these days she has the opposite problem of sands slipping through the hourglass: she doesn’t know how to fill her time. There are empty echoes in her apartment. She can hear windows shattering if she tunes into the right frequency in her mind.

Thankfully there’s a knock at her door, and Ellen breezes in with food and a bottle of wine. They hug, and Ellen holds Scully’s elbows, appraising her.

‘You look pale Dana, ‘ Ellen remarks. ‘Are you ok?'

‘I’m ok. Fighting a cold.’ She told Mulder the same when he picked her up on their way to Virgina that week. It’s true that her immune system is still recovering from the coma and she picks up every cold they meet in the course of their travels. The damp April air had seeped into her bones as the case progressed. It had involved twins – one of whom had died at birth - and a murdered toddler. Dana can’t shake the image of the young boy standing over her raising a dagger.

Ellen switches the radio off and dishes out the food. Dana sits on the floor in front of her coffee table, the energy of her friend insulating her from the echoes. She’s figured out hat she has a number of people she can keep on rotation: Missy, Ellen and her friend Tina from med school, and Mulder. One Friday per month to get food, go to the movies, come to her place, and they don’t even know they’re on a schedule. Saturday nights with her mom. Sunday doing her laundry and grocery shopping. Then thankfully Monday comes with a fresh case and a plane ticket taking her to an anonymous town where she can rest without the sensation of someone grabbing her ankle just as she falls asleep.

She should move.

‘So, how are you?’ Ellen asks as she sits next to Dana on the floor. ‘And I know you’re fine. But how about under that?’

Dana considers the question. She forgets how well Ellen knows her sometimes. Her first thought is the weight of her limbs when she wakes. When she stands. She thinks of her unpredictable sleeping patterns, and her inability to sit still for longer than an hour. There is always a tightness in her chest. She knows they are reactions to trauma. She knows they are surface symptoms of a deeper wound. She just can’t bring herself to look beneath bandaid just yet. 

‘Each day is different,’ she answers honestly. ‘But I’m getting there.’

‘Yeah? That’s great.’ Ellen says warmly, and Scully flushes under her gaze. ‘When Adam and I split, it felt like I’d lost my anchor. It pissed me of that he was still the one I wanted to tell everything to, in spite of.. well, everything. I was a mess for a while.’

‘I remember,’ Scully recalls the nights she spent at Ellen’s, witnessing her rage and her fear, crying with her and holding her hair back, helping her navigate her way back to the future she suddenly free to write for herself. ‘You weren’t a mess. You were moving forwards. You and Trent. It’s a huge adjustment.’

‘So I understand a little bit, I guess is what I’m saying. Not on the same scale of course. But I get the good days and the bad days. And.. sometimes you need someone independent to give it all to.’ Scully senses she’s building to something. ‘How are things going with the counsellor?

_Wow_, _you’re not pulling any punches tonight El. _Scully clears her throat.

‘Uh… I don’t see the work one. Someone private. I prefer that…. Keep it separate. It just works better that way.’

Ellen nods. ‘Is it helping?’

‘Is it helping.’ Again, she thinks before answering. ‘Overall, yes. He has provided me with tools to help me come to terms with what happened. But the actual sessions…. I don’t know. All that time lost, Ellen. Months. How do you make peace with it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ellen’s voice is quiet. ‘Tell me.’

‘It’s like….. do you remember that night we were studying late and they closed the library?’

‘Oh god. I do.’ Ellen covers her face and shakes her head. ‘Longest night of my life. And that includes anything related to the grand marriage break up of 1993.’

‘It feels a bit like that. Familiar and disorienting at the same time. We spent hours trying to find an exit, do you remember? Endless corridors of books, and all we found at the end of each one was another locked door or window.….’ Dana fusses with her cross, running it back and forth along its chain with her left hand. Her right hand still holds her fork, but her food is forgotten. ‘I’m trying to find my way out, and I just end up at another dead end in the dark. I don’t know if the best thing is to wait it out until the morning comes, or keep trying to figure this out myself, which to be honest takes far too much energy than I have right now. And I’m just so _tired_.’ Dana puts her fork down and rubs her neck.

Self-consciousness creeps from her stomach up to the crown of her head, which tingles. She had gotten carried away in the metaphor and exposed too much. She doesn’t want Ellen’s worry. Or pity. She sniffs, picks up her fork, and starts stabbing her noodles. The spicy food cleanses her mind as well as her palette, and she can look at Ellen in the eye again.

_Scene change,_ she communicates. _Please. Please. _

‘You should see my acupuncture guy,’ Ellen suggests in between mouthfuls of food. ‘At least for your headaches. I swear he’s a genius. Afterwards I feel like I’m floating on clouds. Of course, it could just be that I’ve had 20 minutes to relax without anyone shouting for me!’

‘Acupuncture?’ Dana shakes her head gratefully and smiles. ‘You sound like Missy. There’s no evidence that it actually works, you know. Give me your $60, I’ll ply you with food and wine and you’ll feel like you’re floating when you leave here too.’

‘Aren’t we already doing this? Like right now? And I don’t have to pay.’ Ellen laughs.

The weight of the food in Dana’s stomach relaxes her, and her neck loosens. Ellen turns on _Steel Magnolias _and pours them both more wine but Scully doesn’t touch it. She’s already had half a glass, and she wants to maintain control. She can’t afford to get complacent. On the screen, Julia Roberts tells Sally Field that she’d rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.

‘You know, I don’t think I could do that,’ Ellen says. Scully raises her eyebrow. ‘Have a child knowing I was ill. I mean, maybe before I had Trent I would think that. But now… I couldn’t have a child knowing I am probably too sick to be around and raise him fully.’

‘I’ve never thought about it that way. I always saw it from Shelby’s perspective: she wants to experience motherhood, and I can see that temptation being very strong. There’s no guarantee that things _won’t _work out. That child would be so loved.’

‘Yeah, but a mother is her child’s biggest advocate. No one goes out to bat for their kid like a mom, and I don’t care if that’s not a liberated thing to say. I couldn’t look Trent in the eye if I knew in all likelihood that I couldn’t protect him from the loss of his mom. That he would have to go on not knowing me, or how much I love him.’

Dana watches Ellen set her empty wine glass on the table. She knows what Ellen says is true on some level: it’s a tragedy for any child to grow up without fully knowing their mother’s love and support. Could she make a choice to start a life, if she was not in a position to stick around? However, every day is a risk. Anyone who has a child has already weighed up that risk on some level and assessed it safe, but that doesn’t stop some drunk driver ploughing into them as they use a pedestrian crossing

This image stuns Scully: she can’t remember when she became so callous. No, not callous. She’s not callous. It’s something else. She stays with this feeling. The fringe of her rug is knotted; she picks at the tiny threads, smoothing each one flat onto the carpet as she frees it. The knots are tight and they hurt her nails. She realises she is angry. _Thank you cognitive restructuring, _she thinks wryly. Her therapist would be so proud.

She’s angry that some children can’t grow up with their mothers, that some women have to make choices like the character in this film, angry that some women are taken from their homes and their lives as if they are supporting characters in a narrative rather than the leads who control their own story. She would choose the child, she realises. She’d choose the child, and she’d love it and care for it as long as she could. She would control her plot.

‘I would have the child,’ Scully admits. Her tone is sharper than she intends, and her heart starts to palpitate. It feels like a tennis ball hitting her ribcage from the inside. ‘It’s a situation no one ever wants to be in, right? That’s why they made a movie about it. I guess when you think about it, it’s a selfish act, but who knows what would happen in reality? I don’t think I could give up a child, even if I knew the worst would happen to me.’

‘There’s a difference between giving up a child, and actively trying to have a child when you’re compromised.’ Scully’s jaw tightens at Ellens’s choice of word, and her teeth grind. The tension makes her temples ache. Ellen’s voice is fading in and out, as if she were walking into a tunnel. Scully studies the wood on her coffee table. It’s made up of tiny cracks which intersect each other with no pattern or logic, and this comforts her. ‘Then you’re sentencing them to the worst that could happen to _them_.’

‘Yes, but you never know how these things pan out.’ Dana’s breathing is shallow, and she feels slightly dizzy. It creates a buffer between her and the rest of it all: her friend, the tv, her couch. All the edges are fuzzy. It’s not entirely unpleasant, in fact it’s somewhere she’d like to stay. In her mind, she hears her window smash: it sounds like handbells. It shatters her buffer and she’s back, sat on the floor, fending off another panic attack. Her eyes roam to her door and her windows, but they are still intact. She wants to double check, triple check, their locks, but she can’t seem to get up. Her breathing quickens further as a result, and she feels sweat under her arms. She speaks firmly to try and steady herself. ‘You don’t know what advances are just around the corner; there are plenty of people who survive against the odds.’

The pause in the room is loud and awful.

‘I’m so sorry Dana….’ Ellen grabs her hand and kisses it clumsily. Dana inhales deeply to calm herself. ‘I didn’t think. I’ve had too much wine. I’m sorry. I was just off in my own world thinking about Trent. I didn’t even – ‘

‘It’s ok Ellen, really,’ Dana nods for herself as much as for Ellen, and continues to breathe deeply. The tennis ball in her chest starts to slow. ‘I guess I don’t agree with the original premise of this whole thing. Even the lifetime of nothing special is pretty wonderful if you ask me.’

Ellen keeps hold of Scully’s hand for longer than she’d like, but she doesn’t remove it. She’s glad for the touch of someone else.

The movie continues, and Scully watches Julia Roberts collapse on Halloween with said vulnerable young child. She had forgotten this part of the movie or blotted it out. Sally Field, walking purposefully down the hospital corridor to visit her daughter in the ICU. Her pulse speeds up again. Scully closes her eyes and blocks out the noise of the movie. _You can’t keep doing this, Dana. _She focuses on the feeling of the cushion against her head, the weight of the wool blanket, the way it makes her legs too hot, the smell of the half-finished food on plates in front of her. These things are here, these things are real. Suddenly the room is quiet. She opens her eyes with relief.

‘I’ve seen this movie recently, I don’t need to see it again,’ Ellen says. They both know this isn’t the reason. Ellen stands and gathers up the plates. ‘Hey, how’s your half marathon training going?’

‘It’s… going.’ Scully stands and wraps herself in the blanket and follows her into the kitchen. Together they rinse the plates and load the dishwasher. ‘I’m getting the long runs in, but the speed work is tough. Especially with an irregular work schedule.’

‘I bet. Tell me why you’re doing this again?’

_So I can run fast. For longer. Should the need arise. _

‘To raise money for the physio unit at the hospital. There’s so much equipment they’d benefit from… It’s just my way of giving back.’

‘I didn’t know that. Put me down for $50.’

‘Thanks.’ Ellen turns the lights off, and Scully resists the urge to turn the radio on again. They get into her bed, each knowing their side after years of bed-sharing following nights out, college revision sessions, holidays together. Ellen is as familiar as her binky blanket, and Scully is relieved to feel her eyes grow heavy.

*

Scully gasps for air, her heart racing. She sees a face outside her bedroom window, and she sits up in a panic. She blinks, and the face vanishes. All she sees are the silhouettes of the trees against the streetlamp.

Her clock shows 2:45am. When she closes her eyes, she sees little boys with daggers, people trapped on the ceiling, and she hears handbells.

She sits up once more, careful not to wake Ellen. She turns her radio on low and listens to the commentary, waiting for sleep to come but knowing that it probably won’t.


End file.
